Feminist Imagery in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness

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Feminist Imagery in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness
Many feminist critics have used Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to show how Marolw constructs parallels and personification between women and the inanimate jungle that he speaks of. The jungle that houses the savages and the "remarkable" Kurtz has many feminine characteristics. By the end of the novel, it is the same feminized wilderness and darkness that Marlow identifies as being the cause of Kurtz's mental and physical collapse.
In Heart of Darkness, the landscape is feminized through a rhetoric of personification. The landscape is constructed as an entity that speaks and acts, and is consequently made to appear as something which is alive. The projection of a face on the landscape works through this same personification. Reference to "The sunlit face of the land. . .to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart" is an imitation of apocalyptic resignation, filling Marlow with an apprehension that "it looked at you with a vengeful aspect". Marlow's suspicion is not that there is someone in the forest watching him, but that it is the forest itself which is watching him. The rhetorical personification of the landscape illuminates the wilderness and gives it life. It is this that Marlow presents as his source of unease as he travels in search of Kurtz.
The significance of Kurtz's undoing by the wilderness and Marlow's ethic of restraint is accentuated above all by the account Marlow provides of the "wild and gorgeous apparition" of a native woman he observes from the steamer: She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high;...
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... illusion is established in the way they are spoken about but are, themselves, not allocated as a true component or actual human embodiment of the narrative. The women in the text are never given any voice or name and they are treated only as speechless objects that happen to be part of the overall jungle. Unlike the men in Joseph Conrad's story, the women are set apart from the rest of the story and no matter how important the y actually were to the society of the jungle, they were only spoken of as inanimate objects that happened to have the power to walk across the land. In the end, it is by the hands and powers of these unspoken women who bring the downfall of Kurtz and his empowerment over the African jungle. It is the "horror" of truth and reality that finally tears him down, the same truth that was withheld from the women of the story in every possible way.

Oppositions in Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is full of oppositions. The most obvious is the juxtaposition of darkness and light, which are both present from the very beginning, in imagery and in metaphor. The novella is a puzzling mixture of anti-imperialism and racism, civilization and savagery, idealism and nihilism. How can they be reconciled? The final scene, in which Marlow confronts Kurtz's Intended, might be expected to provide resolution. However, it

When read at face value, Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, is a portrayal of white, imperial, oppression of the African natives of the Congo. However, when we view the writing through the lenses of psychoanalysis and feminism, a story focused on one character, Marlow, emerges. Each theory presents a new way of interpreting and understanding the character development and imagery within the story. Psychoanalysis provides a look into the mind and dreamlike setting of Marlow. Feminism examines

in response to the events on September 11, 2001, the outcomes during the weeks that followed, and the ‘International Day Against War and Racism’ rally held on September 29, 2001.
Here I will address Brah’s argument with questions concerning the feminist perspective guiding her critique. More specifically, I will be raising questions concerning the function and effectiveness in reimagining humanity as a “reconfigured political subject” (Brah 44). Such questions will be directed toward the main points